


come back and carry me home

by parcequelle



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: Bernie and Serena in the weeks, months, and years to come.





	come back and carry me home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [6741](https://archiveofourown.org/users/6741/gifts).



Weeks pass, and Bernie is at peace. The peace has hollowed out something inside her, burrowed its way down deep and made a home, but it’s peace nonetheless. She doesn’t wonder if they’ve made the right decision; she knows they have. The right decision is always easy and difficult and painful and relieving all at once.

*

Weeks pass, and Serena is restless, vacillating between guilt at this sudden sense of freedom and uncertainty about what to do with it. Leah leaves, and Serena doesn’t miss her. Her colleagues figure out what happened with Bernie and keep their distance, fearing fire, fearing Serena at her manipulative worst. They dart around her like bees without a queen when she doesn’t deliver. She wonders if they think she has grown so cold that she no longer cares. How can she explain that sometimes, the pain of inevitability worms itself so deeply into your heart that it becomes stillness? That when you feel too much, there comes a point – after Adrienne, after Elinor – when you have to start over or risk feeling nothing ever again?

In the end, she meets Mo in Pulses, and they set her up a profile for online dating. She receives message after message she doesn’t touch, women both young (so very, very young, too young) and old, compatible and not. She swipes them out of existence, her index finger a steady, ruthless god.

*

Months pass, and a Canadian woman at the NTC asks Bernie out for a drink. Her name is Ellen. Bernie says, ‘Oh, I’d better not…’ and then says, ‘Sure.’

Ellen smiles, and they go out for drinks.

Bernie learns that her name is really Eleanor, but it isn’t spelled the same.

*

Months pass, and Serena goes on dates. Some are successful; some are not. Serena feels humiliated the first time she walks into a restaurant to meet a 38-year-old teacher named Jillian, but Jillian is easy to talk to and doesn’t have blond hair. She does this all the time, Jillian says to Serena. It’s no big deal. You can’t go out with people you work with, can you, so what other choice do busy career women have?

They go on a second date, but the chemistry is lacking, so they agree to leave it and be friends. Serena finds herself hoping they really will.

After that comes Annalise, Renata, Sam, Chloe, Kath, Cathy, Maggie, and Helen. She sees Kath for three months, Helen for seven. She likes Kath a lot, loves Helen. Things don’t work out, and she’s sorry, but if she knows anything by now it’s that pain is fleeting.

*

Ellen moves back to Canada on assignment, and Bernie breaks up with her. They are in bed.

‘We could try long distance,’ Ellen says, but Bernie reads the same peace in her eyes that she feels herself. Ellen doesn’t mean it, not really; she is sad, but also relieved. Bernie smiles and brushes her fringe out of her eyes.

‘No, we couldn’t,’ she says gently. ‘But it’s been fun.’

‘It has,’ Ellen says.

Bernie drives her to the airport two weeks later, and that’s that.

*

Years pass, and Serena thinks about retirement.

‘But what would you _do_?’ asks Jac, socked feet on the arm of the sofa, Fletch’s fingers curled around her ankle. The kids are in the next room, playing a board game that requires, blessedly, both deep concentration and quiet. ‘Sit around knitting?’

‘Tried that once,’ Serena says vaguely. ‘I still have half a sock, somewhere.’

‘Why now?’ Fletch asks. Alarm crosses his face as he sets down his tea cup. ‘You aren’t sick, are you?’

‘No, of course not. I’ve just been thinking. I’m a bit old for a career change, but things on AAU are starting to feel a bit… stale.’ She sighs. ‘I could become a full-time grandmother, now that there are two of them. Greta talks about getting a job, sometimes.’

Jac and Fletch look at each other, sceptical, and then back at her. Jac says, ‘You wouldn’t last two seconds as a full-time grandmother, Campbell. You’d start doing laparotomies on the dolls.’

Serena snorts, but it’s hard to deny. It’s a romantic notion, having the time to read and listen to music and write up a few articles while she watches over the children, but it wouldn’t be enough. That life lacked intellectual stimulation when she was raising her own daughter, so what chance would she have with someone else’s?

‘You’re just in a rut,’ Jac declares. ‘You need a new person. What happened to that last woman… Anne, was it?’

‘Anna,’ Serena corrects. ‘She was fine, but…’

‘Say no more,’ Jac says, snorting. ‘”Fine” is hardly a glowing compliment.’

‘I reckon you need to go on holiday,’ Fletch says. ‘Bugger off to the Mediterranean for a few weeks, get some sun, come back refreshed. You’ve got the leave, don’t ya?’

‘Maybe I should,’ Serena says, though she knows she won’t, just like she knows she won’t retire until her arthritic hands have seized around a scalpel.

*

Years pass, and Charlotte gets engaged. Bernie is living in Bucharest, these days, finishing up a trauma unit modelled on her improvements in Nairobi. She’s the head of the project, the medical liaison, working her socks off and loving it. Charlotte calls just as she’s getting off a double shift, exhausted but satisfied, and she fumbles to get her phone out of her coat before it stops ringing.

‘Hello? Hello? Charlotte?’ she says, and Charlotte laughs.

‘Hi, Mum. Bad time?’

‘Not at all, I just knocked off. Just let me get outside.’ She strides through the bustling, half-erected construction zone that is “reception” and stops when the noise does. ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m here.’

They make small talk – Charlotte’s boss is rubbish but the pay is good, Bernie’s job is great, Marcus and Carol are on holiday in Morocco – and then Charlotte says, ‘Right, I can’t keep it to myself any longer, I have to tell you!’

‘What?’ Bernie asks. Her heart rushes to pregnancy before she remembers that the odds are slim, because—

‘Liz and I are getting married! You’ll come home for it, right?’

‘It’s not tomorrow, is it?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Then I’ll be there,’ Bernie says, laughing. ‘Now tell me everything.’

*

‘How much do you love me?’ Serena asks, leaning across the table and fluttering her eyelashes. 

‘Infinitely,’ Jac says flatly. ‘My heart beats for you and you alone.’

‘Oi!’ Fletch calls from the kitchen, and Jac rolls her eyes.

‘Right, let’s try this again, shall we?’ This time, Serena leans across the table at eye level, doesn’t blink, and says, ‘How badly do you want me to owe you?’

Jac puts down her knitting. (Really.) ‘I’m listening.’

*

The day of the wedding, Bernie is more nervous than she was on the day of her own. 

‘For God’s sake, Mum, calm down,’ Cam says, for about the fifth time. ‘You’ll stress Lottie out if she sees you like this, and she doesn’t need it.’

‘Sorry,’ Bernie says, but doesn’t stop pacing. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

Cam comes over and rubs her arms, soothing. ‘You just need a distraction. There’s hours to go yet. Why don’t you go and help Dad with the drinks? They want three separate tables for alcoholic, non-alcoholic, and things for the kids.’

‘Right,’ Bernie says. ‘Good plan. I’ll do that.’

‘And take your suit jacket off or you’ll spill something on it.’

Bernie rolls her eyes but does as she’s told.

When she gets to the drinks tables, Marcus is hefting beer crates alone, and she bends to help.

‘Hi, Bern.’

He’s still one of the only people she’ll allow to call her that. Funny that Serena never did it, and nor has anyone else tried since then.

‘Where’s Carol?’ Bernie asks.

‘Helping with the decorations. They went sunflower-picking this morning and now they’re hanging them up in a pattern that means something to do with positive energy. I think I heard something about vegan string.’ 

They exchange a look.

‘Well,’ Bernie says, ‘as long as they’re happy.’

They shift crates in silence, load bottles into a fridge that is attached to electricity by four different extension cables. ‘Vegan string doesn’t make sense,’ Bernie says finally.

Marcus chuckles. ‘No, it doesn’t.’

This is how things were always best between them, she thinks. Quiet. No push, no strain.

*

The ceremony is more alternative than even Bernie expected – they throw bird seed instead of rice, the coffee and tea is all fair-trade, Charlotte and Liz wear pretty floral dresses Liz sewed for them out of environmentally-friendly material – but it’s lovely, and it fits. Bernie cries; Marcus, beside her, cries more; Carol pretends she isn’t crying, but she crushes Marcus’ hand so hard it’s red with the indentations of her fingerprints when she pulls away. They all hug Charlotte and they all hug Liz and they all hug each other, and then they all hug Liz some more because her wanker parents didn’t come.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Bernie says in her ear. ‘You’ve got us, now, and as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been family since the moment Charlotte raved about you over the phone. Three new parents for the price of two.’

Liz cries too, after that, and her vegan mascara runs all down her cheeks.

Bernie is refilling her mimosa when someone taps her on the shoulder and says, ‘Hello, stranger.’

‘Am I hearing things?’ Bernie asks, but she’s grinning as she turns around and comes face-to-face with Jac Naylor, gorgeous and confident in dark pants and a blouse. It’s the most dressed-up Bernie has ever seen her, and she laughs as they hug. ‘What are you doing here? Do you know Liz?’

‘I don’t know either of them, actually, but I would like to introduce you to my date.’ She smirks, and Bernie realises what’s about to happen a second before Jac says, ‘Serena, come here!’

Serena is stunning, blinding, in a long, elegant blue dress that draws Bernie’s eye down and up and down again more than once. She swallows and laughs, says, ‘Uh, hi there,’ and then Serena is grinning and rushing into her arms, and they’re laughing, and Jac’s looking smugger than she has any right to.

‘You’re at my daughter’s wedding!’ Bernie exclaims, and she draws back to look at her but doesn’t let her go, not yet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Well I would’ve had your hippie daughter bothered to put her last name on the invitation. I know Liz from our old church, she was in Elinor’s class at school, and…’

‘I understand,’ Bernie says, and watches Serena’s eyes soften in gratitude. She won’t make her explain any more. ‘I’ll bet you Charlotte knew you were coming, too, conniving little so-and-so. I’ll be having words with her later.’

‘Oh, leave it,’ Serena says merrily, flapping a hand at her. ‘I’m so glad to see you. Shall we go and sit down somewhere and catch up?’

Her eyes twinkle, and Bernie’s stomach lurches. That answers that question, then. She gestures with her champagne flute and says, ‘Lead on, Ms Campbell.’ The words are like coming home.

*

‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Bernie asks, ‘Or were you the one to finally turn Jac Naylor?’

Serena laughs so hard she spills champagne on her dress, but the answer is no. ‘What about you?’

‘No, no one for me,’ Bernie says, giving her a smile. ‘Not at the moment.’

*

Weeks pass, and they exchange regular emails. Serena signs them all “xx”, and Bernie signs them all “love”. Serena often types “love” and then chickens out before she sends it, though she isn’t sure why. She knows she loves Bernie, knows that Bernie loves her, know that this thing had the ring of escalation about it from the moment they met at the wedding.

(Incidentally, Charlotte had known Serena was coming, and it was her idea to leave their last names off the invitation, her idea to manipulate a meet-cute reunion. Serena tries to be mad at her and fails.)

Months pass, and Bernie writes that her work in Bucharest is almost done, that she has no fixed plans. She writes that Marcus has told her they’d like her to oversee the building of a new trauma ward at St James’ with a contract to lead it, that she’s thinking of going for it. What would Serena think of that?

Serena, on a mediocre date with a mediocre man when the email comes through, excuses herself to the ladies to type a reply. _That would be wonderful. I’d love to have you within touching distance again._ She sends it before she notices how suggestive it sounds, or maybe she notices and sends it anyway.

Bernie sends her back a smiley face, a thumbs up sign, and an apple. She thinks the apple is probably a mistake. Her Bernie, she thinks, squashing down a smile and a swell of affection. Baffling to the last.

When Bernie walks onto the ward three weeks later, eyes bright and happy, hair a mess, it’s hardly a surprise. Still, Bernie says, ‘Surprise,’ when Serena walks into the office, and Serena laughs and throws her arms around her, both of them hanging on a moment too long. At least three people are peering into the room from the ward, but Bernie doesn’t care.

She’ll kiss her later, when the blinds are down, when they’re alone, when she can do it properly. 

For now, Serena says, ‘Welcome home.’


End file.
